Very long optical fiber transmission paths, such as those employed in undersea or trans-continental terrestrial lightwave transmission systems including optical-amplifier repeaters, are subject to decreased performance caused by a host of possible impairments. The impairments typically increase as a function of the length of the optical transmission. In long optical transmission paths that include optical amplifiers, the impairments tend to vary with time and cause a random fluctuation in the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the optical transmission path. The random fluctuation in SNR contributes to a phenomenon known as signal fading. The SNR fluctuations also result in an increased average bit error ratio (BER) in digital signals being transmitted over the optical transmission path. When the SNR of a digital signal being transported on such an optical transmission path becomes unacceptably small relative to the average SNR (resulting in an undesirably high BER), a signal-to-noise fade is said to have occurred. Experimental evidence has shown that the signal fading and SNR fluctuations are caused by a number of polarization dependent effects induced by the optical fiber itself and/or other optical components within the transmission path. In particular, one of these effects has now been identified as polarization dependent hole burning (PDHB), which is related to the population inversion dynamics of the optical amplifiers. A discussion of hole-burning can be found in an article by D. W. Douglas, R. A. Haas, W. F. Krupke and M. J. Weber, entitled "Spectral and Polarization Hole Burning in Neodymium Glass Lasers"; IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics, Vol. QE-19, No. 11, November 1983.
PDHB reduces gain of the optical amplifiers within the long optical transmission path for any signal having a state of polarization ("SOP") parallel to that of a polarized primary optical signal carried by the transmission path. However, the gain provided by these amplifiers for optical signals which have an SOP orthogonal to that of the primary signal remains relatively unaffected. In simplified terms, the primary optical signal produces an anisotropic saturation of the amplifier that is dependent upon the SOP of the primary optical signal. The polarized primary signal reduces the level of population inversion anisotropically within the amplifier, and results in a lower gain for optical signals in that SOP. This effectively causes the amplifier to preferentially enhance noise having an SOP orthogonal to that of the primary signal. This enhanced noise lowers the SNR of the transmitted information and causes an increased BER.
Additionally, it is also desirable to reduce the effects of polarization dependent loss (PDL) caused by the dichroism of the optical components in the repeater. Such components have orthogonal principal dichroic axes that define the highest-loss and lowest-loss SOPs incident on them. If elliptical SOPs have their principal axes aligned with those of the dichroic, dichroic losses can, with some low probability, accumulate substantially along a cascade. The condition for substantial accumulation of dichroic losses may be stated as follows: During a significant fraction of a polarization-modulation ("scrambling") cycle of the optical signal launched into the transmission network, the major axes of the elliptical SOPs incident on the dichroic elements tend to align with the high-loss axes of the dichroics. (In other parts of the scrambling cycle, the major SOP axes will then align with the low-loss axes of the dichroics. Such alignments do not cause fading.) The damaging fading occurs during the portion of each scrambling cycle that favors polarized-signal losses. The fading persists as long as an accidental high-loss alignment of any principal-axis pairs persists over a substantial fraction of a scrambling cycle.
A prior method for reducing signal fading employs a two-wavelength light source to transmit information in two orthogonal states of polarization over an optical fiber transmission path. Since a this light source shares its optical power equally on any two orthogonal SOPs within the fiber, deleterious polarization-dependent effects may be reduced as long as the two wavelengths remain orthogonally polarized along the optical transmission path.